conlangfandomcom-20200223-history
Modern Yorshaan
Modern Yorshaan, on contrary of Early Modern Yorshaan, is more simplified and more influenced by Romance language (including Atramia). General Information The document of Yorshaan is finished, and you can find it here . Unfortunately, as you can see, there are way too many differences between the conlang wikia version and the document version. As a result, this page now serves as an archive of Modern Yorshaan, so that you can take a glance at how it looks like initially. The reason why I would like to keep this page intact is that it would take me too much time editing the page. Hah, you can call me a lazy person now. Anyways, if you are lucky enough, you can run into me on reddit /r/conlangs. Gallery Shoye ic sidavei hersum ampifonzetum.jpg|Shoye ic sidavei hersum ampifonzetum, siv yumu cu siy biza! (One of my friends died from hay fever yesterday, yet I wasn't able to do anything!) parts of face.jpg|Oiampit Fandi / Parts of Face Phonology : main article: Modern Yorshaan phonology '' Orthography Alphabet Yorshaan uses 23 latin letters, excluding Q, K, and X. Phonemic Orthography In an ideal orthography system, a grapheme should exactly correspond to one phoneme. Shallow orthography is said to approach such assertion, rendering the pronunciation of a word predictable. On the contrary, deep orthography, like the notorious English, takes learners longer time. Yorshaan, unevitably, contains some irregularity. Here is the discussion: Written and Spoken There has always been people arguing over orthography reform. In response to such request, the leader of Yorshaan autonomy (under Atramia) once stated that "written Yorshaan preserves features that cannot be achieved by spoken language. It is why and wherefore written language is distinguished from spoken language." Undeniably, Modern Yorshaan, despite some misleading words, implies some informations of words with the help of its chaotic spelling, and some syntax features such as inversion seldom occur in one's conversation. Therefore, it is recommanded that one learner memorize the "written" part and the "spoken" part of a word apart. Dialectal Difference Reflection of verbs or nouns and even the spelling of words also varies among dialects. In general, Yorshaan can be divided into three groups: *Northern dialect *Central dialect *Western dialect Although nowadays central dialects are deemed as canon, northern and western dialects coexist, obtaining in various places. Like the suffix for present participle of English words "-ing" used to be one of variations such as "-inde" or "-and", participles have numbers of different forms in different dialects. Words including ''ts, th, dz, ds do also suffer from dialectal variations. Central spelling suggested that, although they are all read as /θ/ in central dialects, these are either /tʰ/ or /ts/ long time ago. *ithu "poverty" **norhtern: isu (s-th merge), itsu, ithu, itzu **western: iszu, ithu *datse "height" **nothern: dase (s-th merge), datse, datze **western: dase Pronouns Personal The personal pronouns differ according to person, number, and case. All of these pronouns are inherited form EMY and seems pretty regular, except for third person ones. These pronouns can stand alone (as a simple answer) or be the arguments of verbs (see verb property chapter for more detail). The instrumental, reflexive, and vocative forms of pronouns have been lost. Interrogative and Relative (Adverb) Yorshaan uses interrogative adverbs and pronouns to make questions. Some modern adverbs are derived from the inherented adverb with some noun suffixes, while some are the combination of the pronouns and prepositions like is and yet. The relative pronouns of Modern Yorshaan has been merged with interrogative ones. Hence the rules for relative clauses is different from Early Modern Yorshaan. Indefinite Some of the pronouns are inherited from Classical Yorshaan, whereas some are borrowed from Atramia, such as the one referring to exclusive things altrene (altrè'n in Atramia), indicating negative existense necu (necuei in Atramia), and meaning distributive things shalu (šalei in Atramia). Demonstrative The demonstrative pronouns are derived from demonstrative determiners. To put it simple, pronouns are determines with noun declensions: Determiners Determiners, or specifiers, are the words that must occur with a noun. However, a noun can appear without a determiner (zero article). Articles There are definite and indefinite articles in Yorshaan. The articles only express whether the modified noun is definite or not. Demonstratives, however, can express where the chosen object is (proximal, medial, or distal), it's numebr, and the grammatical case. Nonetheless, compared to demonstratives, articles are much irregular. For example, demonstratives can only express dative and non-dative cases, whereas articles can express all 5 cases. There are three types of articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The indefinite article is basically the numeral "one". Demonstrative All the determiners are all put behind the modified noun. *Shelaa grayosh mabe ri melet mei. (Please send this letter to that girl.) Possessive Possessive determiners in Yorshaan is realized by the genitive case. Like most adjectives in Yorshaan, there determiners must be behind the modified nouns. A noun in genitive case can also be modified by another noun also in genitive case. In this case, it's the original form of the previous noun being modified. *Mi pocte nadaven muli ic. (The birthday of my daughter.)(muli modifies pocte nadaven and simultaneously is modified by ic.) Nouns Nouns (and other stuff) are arguments of a verb. There are basically two major groups of nouns in Yorshaan: group I and gorup II, based on whether a noun is countable or not. The case system in modern language has become simplier than that if EMY. The instrumental and vocative cases are lost, while absolutive, ergative, dative, ablative, and genitive cases are preserved. Group I Group I consists of countable nouns. It is necessary for an ablative noun since the singular and plural form share the same writting. Group II Verbs of group II are all uncountable. Absolutive and Ergative Both absolutive and ergative are crucial cases in Yorshaan, like nominative and accusative cases in English and other languages. Nontheteless, the absolutive is the most important case and must exist in every independent clause, i.e. there are some dependent clauses containing only ergative nouns. Nouns in absolutive and ergative are always regarded as "direct" arguments of verbs since they involve with the "doer" and the "receiver (or patient and agent) of the verb. Hence, under normal circumstances, both absolutive and ergative nouns have to put in front of a verb. The only situation where absolutive / ergative nouns can occur behind a verb is that the noun, including it's adjunt, is too long, like nouns with a long relative clause. Dative and Ablative Dative and ablative nouns are regarded as "indirect" arguments of a verb and sometimes can be even considered adverbs. They can only occur behind verbs and some ablative gerunds like common is ''(gerund of ''seron) and yet (gerund of eton). The dative case has several usages in Modern Yorshaan: The ablative case, though less common, has several usages as well. Genitive Acting like Adjectives Genitives can be regarded as adjectives origined from nouns. The agreement of adjectives can be applied to genitives. See the adjective seciton for more detail about adjectives. Irregular Nouns Yet there are some nouns having irregular inflections. Cells with pink background contains irregular forms. -''oie and ''-eie Nouns Some irregular nouns end in -oie or -eie due to the loss of the consonant y /j/. For example, savoie (valley) is used to be savoye in EMY. -''nt'' Countable Nouns These -''nt'' nouns are those whose last consonant is voiced and penult vowel is e'' or ''i. The nasal ending of plural dative and ablative depends on the original last consonant: *b, w, v → m *n, d, dz, zh, j, zhy, g → n *r → r *l → l In this case, the last consonant of the word woizebe is b and the ending of both plural dative and blative is m. This phenomenom arose from the simplification of specific nouns. Below is a table comparing the expected inflection and this irregular one. Irregular ablative Even though both singular and plural ablative have merged, there are still some exceptional inflections. Irregular ablative often occur on nouns with low vowel initials such as i, u, and eu. Under formal circumstances should not this happen, but in casual conversations and especially on the Net people tend to remove the intial y from the ablative, resulting "the bare form of the noun". For example, the ablative of euride "meteor" should be yeurid. Eliminating the initial y results in eurid. Though such move is not recommended by educational institutions, but since most people could tell them apart by only hearing their pronunciation, more and more people have adopted this new form of ablative. Proper Nouns Proper nouns in Yorshaan often refer to those who are unique in this world, such as names, jargons and other specific words. These nouns are always capitalized and decline according to their countableness. Most of proper nouns are countable, hence group I nouns. Another difference is that the absolutive of proper nouns is lack of the ending e''. *E siy buma '''Seifindimetron' blamyem. ("He doesn't want to learn trigonometry.") To Become Verbs Nouns can be converted into verbs by attaching the suffix ''-ashem'' and therefore follow the strong verb conjugation. This feature is inherited from the instrument case. *ucetsu (loyality) *Ci ucets'ashie'! (Be loyal to me!) Compound Noun A compound noun is formed by adding the genitive form of a nou in front of another noun. Thus, the order of the words is different from merely using an adjective (genitive form) modifying the noun. *omivyole (The Era of Darkness) *vyole omi (dark era) Loan words As the globalization goes, people gradually find it impossible to express everything in their life with ordinary Yorshaan words. Besides creating new compounds from already-existing words, foreign words start to be imported into Yorshaan. Usually these loan words would be modified so that they would fit in the phonology of Yorshaan, like the modified term Cuwantum comes from what we would call in English "quantum". Since modern phonology doesn't allow labialized consonants to be appear, the syllable qua- becomes cuwa-. When a loan word is a noun or a verb, the corresponding ending will be added. Nouns receive either -e or -u according to their countableness, and verbs receive -am so that they conjugate as a weak verb. The word "concrete", refering to a building material, becomes concritu since it is uncountable. Loan words can also combine with ordinary Yorshaan words, especially in specific subjects. The word, mentioned earlier, Seifindimetron consists of seifinde "triangle" and metron "-metry", while the former is ordinary and the latter is loan from Greek. A might more appropriate word Trigonometron was once proposed since the whole word was imported from Greek like trigonometry in English, but it was somehow rejected by the multitude of people. Verb Conjugation History Languists manage to build a common ancestor of Yorshaan languages: Proto-Yorshaan, which might be either a daughter proto-language of PIE or isolated from that. Theoretically, in PY, there are several ways to mark the tense of a verb. Strong Verb= The strong verbs change their stem vowel (of the last of the word) in only one way: -''a''- for present, -''i''- for past, and -''ai''- for future. Yet there are verbs take the form -''u''-''em'' or -''oi-em''. They are derived from -''u''-''eem'' and -''œ''-''eem'' verbs in EMY. Their penult vowels might be different, but they will all become -''i''- in past tense and -''ai''- in future. |-|Weak Verb= |-|Irregular: Yon= |-|Irregular: Alon= |-|Irregular: Eton= The ablative form of the gerund, yet, is a common adverbial participle in Yorshaan. It often indicates the time point when something is happened. Like yet co dagem ''means "when sb. look at me". |-|Irregular: Seron= The most common suppletive verb in Yorshaan, also an import role in perfect compound. The replacing term ''wed and wedz comes from Old Yorshaan vhederum (to leave), and oiv-'' or ''ois-'' from ''eyupsarum (to run). The word seron itself was seronzh ''(''to go ''& to be like'') in Early Modern Yorshaan, from Middle Yorshaan sairronzj, seyrrunzy (to go, to depart, to leave), se-'' (''inchaotive prefix) + yrronzy (to leave), from Old Yorshaan yurrhunzyum ''(''to be apart), yurr- ''(''ablative prefix) + henzyum ''(''to move), from Proto-Yorshaan *''hẽzy- (''to move, to act). Cognate with Farnian hibe (to come). The adverbial participle or seron, is, is one of the most used adverbs in Yorshaan (that functioning like a preposition). It can mean either to ''or ''from in English, depending on the case of the noun behind it. *nim is inar ic. (far from my house) *birdam is Vorgastet. (wander toward Vorgast) Verb Properties Passive and Antipassive Voice Since Yorshaan is an absolutive-ergative language, both passive and antipassive voice has never died out. (though only participles have antipassive form) For example: :He-NOM smiles when I-NOM see him-ACC. would be : E-ABS stucha preu e'''-ABS '''cu-ERG daga. (*Him-ABS smiles when I-ERG see him-ABS) The method Yorshaan adapted to express antipassive is to convert the vern into its antipassive participle and introduce the copula alon. : E-ABS stucha preu co-ABS al e-ABS dagise. (*Him-ABS smiles when me-ABS is him-ABS seeing) So that there will be no ergative objects, both co and e'' are all absolutive. This function is silimar to that of English, whose pattern "sb. be V+ed by..." refers to passive voice. The transitivity of the verb ''dagem has been reduced (taking only one argument co). Reflexive Construction Reflexive verbs take the same object as its agent and patient at the same time, like the verb wash in the sentence "I wash myself." There are no reflexive pronouns in modern Yorshaan; however, reflexive verbs can be regarded as other verbs with infix -''apam. For example ''dagem means "to see" while dagapam means "to see oneself" or "to reflect". Reflexive verbs resembling strong verbs are "weakened strong verbs with infix -''apam''". *Si e cu daga dagapam. (I don't see him reflect.) Subjunctive and Optative Mood In EMY, subjunctive form often received long suffixes. In modern usage, the imperative has been replaced by simplified subjunctive and subjunctive merged with optative. Among the three remaining moods (indicative, optative and imperative), the imperative form from EMY has fallen out of use. Due to the substitution, some subjunctive usage can be expressed by optative verbs in moden speaking. The conditional sentences is a good example, where the condition clause would be in subjunctive mood in EMY. (see below) Meanwhile, more and more circumstances where one should adopt subjunctive or optative mood become dclarative, like Old English loses some of its subjunctive usage in Modern English. Nowadays the optative mood can only be seen in some clauses introduced by conjunctions (like noia in conditional sentences) and honorific speach. Adopting optative mood in proper situations has been regarded as educated. On the contrary, colloquial speaking prefers declarative mood rather than optative, especially those who contact with Atramias or Europeans often are less likely to use optative. Participles There are two properties of a participle in Modern Yorshaan: tense and voice. 1) Modifying a Noun Participles can play a role as an adjective and taking another nouns as arguments at the same time. *none mi farise (the burning world) *none mi farim (the burned world) *mabe mi fawen u (the letter stolen by him) 2) To Form the Perfect Forms in perfect compuond were actually a combination of the verb and yog in early modern Yorshaan. In Modern Yorshaan, however, the method is different. Two verbs, yon and seron, has been introduced to form the perfect. Here only passive participles are used. *Jase cu alim iy. (I have drunk water.) *E nacrim sera. (She has cried.) In most cases, intransitive verbs use the verb seron. Modal verbs can also be treated as intransitive ones, thus those verbs usually take the modal verb seron as well. *Co aletois seri dagise e. (I have seen him.)(= E cu dagim oy.) In the sentence above, the word aletois is passive whereas dagise is antipassive. 3) Adverbal Form Participles can alse been regarded as the "adverbal form" of verbs and have a variety of usages: *a) To modify the sentense. (Only passive available.) *b) Dangling perticiple. *c) Genitive absolute. In absolute construction, the participle phrase, sanding apart from the main sentence, intends to modify (or adds extra information to) the sentence without the intention to modify any noun. In Modern Yorshaan, this construction is realized by a participle preceding a noun in genetive case. Infinitives There were once infinitive dependent and infinitive independent in EMY, but the dependent usage becomes obsolete. In modern usage, every infinitive is independent (they still can't form a main clause on their own). Some usages are inherited from classic ones. 1) Introductory Word of a Noun Clause Silimar to English to-infinitive, infinitives can be used for introductory word of a clause. *Co sayem e ore. (To listen to him makes me sleep.) Beware that though the infinitive sayem should be ergative (making me sleep), it will never end in -''eu'' or -''im''. All the suffixes that would be attached in EMY are all dropped. 2) Consequence of previous verb Infinitives can attach to other finite verbs. In such case, the whole clause with the infinitive acts like adverb and thus doesn't effect the main verb. The clause in the following sentences are underlined. *Wasit in lopiteu ri fiwats uage euz bapem is vaset.(This villager stole our bread to keep his body and soul together.(lock his soul in torso)) *Sluye mi u cirter nyo spadem. (He raised the torch to warn us.) *Do cu bume hecte in boram. (I want you to keep our secret.) Gerunds Gerunds in Yorshaan are usually regarded as the noun of an action. There is only one form of gerunds, regardless whether its passive or antipassive (different from infinitives). Yet gerunds can never take any argument. Gerunds is also used for adverbial participles. In this case, the ablative case of gerunds is adopted. On treated as adverbial participles instead of a noun in ablative case, it's able to take arguments. Consider one conditional sentence: *Cradit sideir yoirvar. = Cradit sideir noia vin oirvats. (People die if they are killed.) The adverb yoirvar (ablative of oirvaru) replaces the clause noia vin oirvats (if they are killed). In modern usage conditional sentences that are implying facts often adopt such construction, whereas other circumstances (predicative & hypothetic) still use optative form of verbs. *'Idagar' nyo, e stucha. (Upon seeing us, he smiles.) Adjective Adjectives are used to modify or add extra information to nouns. Adjectives were "the form of the nouns that modify other nouns", but somehow became an independent category in modern grammar. Take a look at the differences: In EModY, "an adjunt in dative case" was "an adjunt meaning something dative", like bina "kingdom" → biner "for a/the/some kingdom(s)". Such usage was ambiguous, though, and had been mistaken for "changes to its dative form when modifying a dative noun." We can learn from the table above that not all specific case of adjectives are inherented from EModY. A possible reason is that some forms are actually "the result of the stem following the first or second declension in EModY, and the ''-um'' affix dropped.". As a result, adjectives in modern usage must agree in the case and number with the noun they modify. Predicative Adjectives Adjectives usually come after nouns and after determiners, but they can also follow verbs like copulative verbs. In these case, adjectives are predicative. The most common copulative verb in Yorshaan is alen, while other verbs, such as nolyam ("to color"), froinem ("to make"), bergam ("to taste"), and others can also precede adjectives. Participles derived from verbs can also act as adjectives and follow nouns or copulative verbs. *Vandru koi berga dremyen. ("The meat tastes rotten.") *Froinatte nyo la. ("Make us feel good.") Restrictiveness Under most circumstances, adjectives in Yorshaan are not restrictive. That is, a noun, though followed by adjectives, still requires determiners like articles or possessive ones. *Nube ur ad ("a small hill") To make nouns definite, one can use definite articles (koi) or use comparative form of adjectives without any comparing objects. Like: *Nube ado. ("the smaller hill") *Nube adoe mie (im). ("the hill smaller than that one") Comparative and Superlative The once-existed absolute superlative has been lost. There are only comparative and relative superlative remaining. The affix ''-o'' and ''-a'' is derived from the comparative and (relative) superlative suffix of EModY: -''ijor'' and -''ijar'' respectively. When comparing to an object, the clitic ''-e'' is added to the adjective. It referred to the present third person imperfect form of third conjugation verbs. The object behind it could be either absolutive or ablative, though the latter is becoming archaic. *'Rasoe' /ˈɹɑsø/ maye (imay) koi. ("Redder than the sun") Adjectives without Adverbal Form Some adjectives in Yorshaan don't have adverbial form since it's not necessary. These adjectives are usually static properties of objects like age, color, size, etc. Adjectives and Genetives Another class of words in Yorshaan grammar competing with adjectives is the genetives of nouns, since both of them can modify nouns and genetives can also be predicative, if necessary. The major difference is the relation between the noun and the modifier. Adjectives express or complete the properties of the noun, while genetives indicate that something belongs to others. Another significant difference is that genetives can be modified by adjectives. That is, the adjectives can complete the properties of genetives. *Cradiesle koi meli yozg. ("The beautiful girl's mannequin.") Prepositions and Prepositional Phrase Structure The prepositions are usually derived from the ablative of gerunds of verbs, which is also the adverbial participle of them. In this case, they function as prepositions but the following nouns must be either dative or ablative, depending on the usage. Prepositions usually occur behind nouns or verbs, but, under some circumstances, these phrases can be placed in the front of a sentence (see the section "inversion"). Unlike English, these prepositions are intended for extra information but a fixed pattern of collocations. Therefore, a preposition may bear several meanings, but which of them is used depends on the context. Is The preposition is comes from seron ("to go") and often refers to going or moving (to or from, concretely). *Ablative: the thing the object or action is coming away from. (from) *Dative: the thing the object or action is heading toward. (to, toward) For example: *Dagem is isalleust kos. ("To look and turn away from the screen.") *Dagem isalleust kos. ("To obtain information from the screen.") *Bode koi is Fransen. ("The way towards France.") Yet This originates from the verb eton ("to exist") and is usually used to indicate the time point of the action or sentence. This preposition is a little special due to it's capability of taking genetive nouns. *Ablative: the time point when the action started. (since) *Dative : the time point when the action will cease. (until) *Genetive: the duration of time when the action happens. (for, through) Exempli grantia: *'Yet heritsi anasti'. ("In times of harshness and melancholy.") *'Yet isotyet'. ("Until tomorrow.") Ibind From bindam ("to walk"), this preposition indicates the relative position of the object with others. *Ablative: (a) in front of others. (in front of, before) (b) more advanced or superior *Dative: behind others. (behind, following, after) (b) less advanced or inferior For example: *Pocte koi ibindizh ipoct ri. ("The day ahead of this day.") Imoign From moignem ("to escalate"), this preposition refers to the vertical relative position of objects. *Ablative: (a) above something. (b) superior than *Dative: (a) below something. (b) inferior than Yaic From aicam ("to hit, attack"), this preposition refers to the relation between objects. *Ablative: depending on objects. *Dative: against objects, opposite of. Numerals Adverb Adverbs are derived from adjectives. Both adverbs and adjectives shared the same form in EModY, but, as for the absolutive form, the suffix -''um or -''iys of adjectives dropped. Adverbs derived from -''iys'' adjunts in EModY pick the simplified suffix -''is''. No matter what an adverb modifies, it won't change its spelling. *Seron sepis. (To go fast.) Conditional Sentence Conditional sentences express that whether an event will happen or not depends on another event. One is the conditional, and the other the consequence. In Yorshaan, there are several types of conditional sentences: Implicative Implicative conditional sentences state that if one fact is true, then so is another. Such sentences is used for common sense, obvious facts, and strong will of the speaker. Tense of both clauses is usually present. The conjunction noia indicates the condition clause. *Cradit sideir noia vin oirvats. (People die if they are killed.) Predictive Predictive conditional sentences concern events that would happen in the future on account of another present or future event. The conclusion clause is in future optative mood, while the conditional one can be in either present or future indicative mood, depending on when the condition is going to take place. *Noia u olme euz veshyei prasyenis, cu e lanzagints. (If he admits his fault publicly, I will trust him.) Counterfactual Counterfactual conditional sentences refers to consequences that would happen if an event known to be false or unlikely to happen in the future takes place. The hypothetic situation could be in the past, present or even future. Classically the consequence clause of counterfactual sentences was in optative mood (or even subjunctive), but such usage became archaic, obsolete, and was replaced by declarative mood. *Noia u olme euz veshyaven ogun prasyenis, cu e lanzavei. (If he had admitted his fault publicly, I would have trusted him.) *Noia u olme euz veshyavints prasyenis, cu e lanzei. (If he admitted his fault publicly, I would trust him.) *Noia u olme euz veshyavints prasyenis, cu e lanzagei. (If he were to admit his fault publicly, I would trust him.) Clitics and Affixes There are several clitics that can be attached to nouns (or even verbs) in Yorshaan. There clitics are derived from separate words in Early Modern Yorshaan or early languages, but they became dependent nowadays. A(w)- This clitic was derived from the word a'' in Early Modern Yorshaan. In informal usage, this word can be connected with the modified noun by hyphen. For example, ''edriys '''a' nastiys none'' would be formal while edriys '''a-'''nast none was informal, both of which mean that "sorrowful and painful world". They equal to edr '''a'nast none'' in modern grammar, where the clitic a'' has been merged with the adjective ''nast. The pronunciation of this clitic was once /ɤ/, but then a schwa, eventually a round schwa (probably affected by French, as well as e'' at the end of words of Yorshaan). This is a possible explanation of why would this clitic receive a consonant /w/ in front of a vowel-initial word like ''edr in the phrase none nast '''aw'edr''. Moi(w)- Read /mø(w)/, the clitic is used to indicate alternative options, silimar to or in English. *Oy pri moi'wente '''moiw'arbese du bume? (Do you want a banana or an apple?) -(i)cte This clitic/suffix is believed to be derived from the word standing for "person", crade (MY), or crada (EMY). The word became */ikɹ̩t/ and finally /ikt/. Such usage first appeared in Early Modern Yorshaan, where the gerund of a verb can combine with the word crada. This clitic is no longer productive. The term doinarcte ''can only be used to indicate a member of a chorus. It's not the equivalent of "singing person", but ''crade doinise ''is. (i)-y- An ancient infix inherented from Old Yorshaan to express diminutive form. Like ''meliye ("little girl, bitch, whore") from mele ("girl"). Polar and Content Question '''Polar quesitons are ones to which the expected response is yes or no, whereas content questions require a more specific answer. In Modern Yorshaan, one can tell if a question is polar or content easily because of the difference between their structures. *Polar Q.: Oy pri + Sentence *Content Q.: Q. Particle + Clause Let's see some sentences: Honorific Speech The politeness system in Yorshaan has been simplified, but there are three ways of expressing respect:: #by pronouns. #by honorific forms #by verbs. Honorific Verb As far as rule #1 is concerned, there can be at most four different verbs representing one same meaning, each of them stands for a different different level of politeness: *Casual language *Formal language *Respectful (Referent is superior.) & Humble language (Speaker is inferior.) Take the verb "to know" for example: Alen mvon pri... stands for "that... is true". As far as Yorshaan is concerned, there's no need to modify the rank of patient (absolutive case), and the emphasis is always put on the patient. 'As a result, there would be no humble form of a sentence whose topic is "me" (''Co...) and no respectful form of a sentence whose topic is other people. Honorific Alternatives Some words, referring to others and to one self, are introduced to express politeness. For example: Chemical Element Syntax Sentences in Modern Yorshaan follow some principles: #All adjectives follow nouns they modify. Genitive nouns and verb participles do also observe this law. #Indirect nouns (dative and ablative) are put after verbs. Absolutive nouns proceed ergative ones. #Verbs (modal) follow the verbs they modify. When there are indirect nouns behind the modified verbs, then the modal verbs would follow the nouns. Inversion In Yorshaan grammar, inversion alters the words order of a sentence in order to emphasis on a certain element. For example, in English: *'''Among the mountains sits the mysterious village. where the phrase "among the mountains" has been fronted, the original look of the sentence being: *The mysterious village sits among the mountains. Likewise, in Yorshaan: *'Itlamm ir yaic obei' lope zont koi. (Among the mountains sits the village.) is the sentence which has undergone inversion, the original one being: *Lope zont koi obei yaic itlamm ir. Example Nyo bopaver nadizhictit joisparctis Gneuzeii yon neuram. We were taught to be proud of being the offspring of the founder of Gneuznei. Cin louti oy ijazem hectit yon ibos... Sometimes it is better to leave some secrets intact... Lexicon Lexicon Category:Languages Category:Yorshaan